Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

And their love was a rapture, lone and high,

And dumb as the moon in the topmost sky.

One night Sir Aglovaile, weary, slept

And dreamed a dream wherein he wept.

A warrior he was, not often wept he,

But this night he wept full bitterly.

He woke--beside him the ghost-girl shone

Out of the dark: 'twas the eve of St. John.

He had dreamed a dream of a still, dark wood,

Where the maiden of old beside him stood;

But a mist came down, and caught her away,

And he sought her in vain through the pathless day,

Till he wept with the grief that can do no more,

And thought he had dreamt the dream before.

From bursting heart the weeping flowed on;

And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone;

Shone like the light on a harbour's breast,

Over the sea of his dream's unrest;

Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon,

That the heart seeks ever, night or noon:

Warnings forgotten, when needed most,

He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost.

She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank.

With upturn'd white face, cold and blank,

In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale,

And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile.

Only a voice, when winds were wild,

Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child.

Alas, how easily things go wrong!

A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,

And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,

And life is never the same again.

This was one of the simplest of her songs, which, perhaps, is the cause

of my being able to remember it better than most of the others. While

she sung, I was in Elysium, with the sense of a rich soul upholding,

embracing, and overhanging mine, full of all plenty and bounty. I felt

as if she could give me everything I wanted; as if I should never wish

to leave her, but would be content to be sung to and fed by her, day

after day, as years rolled by. At last I fell asleep while she sang.

When I awoke, I knew not whether it was night or day. The fire had sunk

to a few red embers, which just gave light enough to show me the woman

standing a few feet from me, with her back towards me, facing the

door by which I had entered. She was weeping, but very gently and

plentifully. The tears seemed to come freely from her heart. Thus she

stood for a few minutes; then, slowly turning at right angles to her

former position, she faced another of the four sides of the cottage.

I now observed, for the first time, that here was a door likewise; and

that, indeed, there was one in the centre of every side of the cottage.